More bad news for Detroit:
line of Chinese-made cars began rolling onto a ship here Friday, bound for Europe. The cars, made at a gleaming new Honda factory on the outskirts of this sprawling city near Hong Kong, signal the latest move by China to follow Japan and South Korea in building itself into a global competitor in one of the cornerstones of the industrial economy.
Deals With China and JapanChina’s debut as an auto exporter, small as it may be for now, foretells a broader challenge to a half-century of American economic and political ascendance. The nation’s manufacturing companies are building wealth at a remarkable rate, using some of that money to buy assets abroad. And China has been scouring the world to acquire energy resources, with the bid to buy an American oil company only the latest overture.
Indeed, fierce domestic competition and a faster accumulation of financial assets are laying the groundwork for the arc of China’s rise to be far greater than Japan’s.
“It’s going to be like the Arabs in the 70’s and the Japanese in the 80’s – we were worried they’d buy everything,” said William Belchere, the chief Asia economist for Macquarie Securities in Hong Kong. But unlike those previous challenges, which soon faded, “longer term,” he added, China will “be a much bigger force.”
The story probably should have included some analysis about how the 80’s hysteria over Japan turned out, but we should note that China is not going away. Go read this piece by Jeralynn Merritt about her trip to Shanghai and the Chinese sense of long-term planning.
Hopefully, our man in China, Matthew Stinson, will start blogging again soon.